Digressions and Delectations
by auditoryeden
Summary: Brief looks at Josh and Donna under a variety of circumstances.
1. An Adult Conversation

"Donna," Josh muses aloud, "How would you feel about...leaving the White House to work a campaign."

Donna's heart freezes a little, because they know each other better than anyone else in the world but she's not used to Josh Lyman reading her actual thoughts. Then she takes a breath, realizes he can't possibly have guessed, and asks, "What do you mean? I thought you hated Russell."

"Not Russell," Josh admits, looking faintly mischievous. "I've been thinking about Matt Santos."

It's an instant of pure possibility. Donna can see it, a good, smart, compassionate man, can see that with Josh running his show, that man could make it to the White House. "He'd be a good candidate," she acknowledges.

"Yeah." Josh peers at her, looking sly. "Ideally I'd take you with me, but, uh, probably not as an assistant."

"Not as an assistant," she echoes, and tries not to smile too suddenly.

Josh clears his throat. "Yeah, I mean, you've been talking about wanting more responsibility, and there's not much I can give you here, but on a campaign..."

"What would I be doing?" she asks.

"Everything? I uh, the thing is-"

"Matt Santos doesn't know he's running, yet, does he?" Donna deduces. "Josh-"

"I was thinking of flying out tonight," he tells her, quickly. "Talk to him, give him a chance to talk it over with his wife. If he says yes, then I want you on our team."

Donna stares at him for a long, hard moment, and makes a decision. "That lunch you canceled?" she tells him, "I was going to quit."

She's never in her life seen the expression drain out of a person's face so quickly. "I was going to quit because I want more from my career," she explains, looking him dead in the eye. "I want more responsibility. I want to do something more valuable than filing and typing."

Josh opens his mouth with a thunderous frown, but she forestalls him with a hand. "I know I've done good things and helped pass good legislation. But I want more. If Matt Santos says he'll run, I want in."

"And if he doesn't?" Josh asks, looking pale.

"Then I'm going to ask Will if he has a place for me," she admits. Josh presses his lips together, swallows.

"Okay," he says, then again, more determined. "Okay. That's incentive, I guess."

"How are you going to convince him?" Donna asks, because no matter what she's just threatened to do, she knows Josh is going to convince him.

He grins at her, a devil-may-care smirk the likes of which she hasn't seen in what feels like years, and begins to outline his plan.

A week later, Donna walks out of the bullpen with a cardboard box in her arms, turns in her credentials, and flies to New Hampshire.


	2. Red Light, Green Light

Josh doesn't drive a lot, living in DC, so Donna forgets how completely insane he can be on the road.

She knows he grew up in Connecticut, which explains a lot about him, from his highminded political beliefs to his irrational insistence that the best pizza in the world comes from New Haven and with clams. Donna hasn't spent all that much time in his homestate, but there must be something in the water there, because they're on an unusually squiggly backroad somewhere in Pennsylvania and Josh is doing 50 in a 25 zone, taking every curve with an unflappable enthusiasm that's making her stomach crawl up her esophagus.

"Please, please slow down," she gasps, as they take a hairpin at a hair-raising speed, centripetal force pressing her against the passenger side door.

"We're already running late," Josh says, in his most reasonable tone of voice, the one that means he is, no questions asked, up to something totally unreasonable. A stop sign warning flashes by, and he eases on to the breaks. The way he breaks, slow and feathered and gentle, is the only thing about his driving that doesn't make Donna want to clamber out the sunroof of their rental.

"How does us dying, wrapped around a tree, help us be less late?"

He throws her a charming Lyman smile as he throws the car into first gear and rolls through the stop sign. "We're not gonna die, Donna. You don't know fear until you've driven in Redding at night."

"Do those two things have anything to do with one another? Cause it sounds to me like you just slapped a couple of non sequiturs together to distract me from our impending vehicular demise." As he manipulates the gearshift into third, Donna finds her hand creeping towards the overhead handle, what her sister had always called the "oh-shit" handle.

"My point is, I learned to drive on the backroads of Connecticut," Josh explains, and his eyes are at least on the twindy road now. "They're narrow and stupid and dangerous, and this has got nothing on them."

"Oddly, that does not comfort me at all."

A thing that Donna had not learned, growing up in Wisconsin, is that Connecticut drivers are delusional.

It's sort of a reasonable delusion; trapped between the assholes of New York and the lunatics of Massachusetts, people born and taught to drive in the Nutmeg State believe that they are God's gift to road safety. They let people make inconvenient left turns; they signal before each lane change on the highway; they take turns merging.

And they do all of these things at a minimum of forty miles an hour.

Josh's explanation for this, when she can get him to admit it, is that everything in his state is so spread out, you have to speed if you want to get anywhere in less than thirty minutes. The roads, he explains, are so folded in on themselves that any journey from point A to point B by car will take about twice the distance of a crow's flight.

And so, hairpins at fifty.


	3. Two Tickets

"Sam is sending me away for a week," Josh tells her, voice slightly tinny over the phone, as always. "To Hawaii."

"Excuse me?" Donna stares semi-vacantly at Helen, who's watching with a faint smile and sharp, knowing eyes. They haven't told anyone anything, seeing as neither of them knows what they're doing, but after Ronna definitely caught them in bed on Election Day, everyone's been giving her side-eye.

"In Hawaii I'm told I'm to sleep late, eat real food, and not answer my cellphone," Josh continues to inform her, and Donna deduces from the echoing and uneven sound that he's got her on speaker and is probably packing. "In other words, a vacation."

"Thanks for letting me know," she says, mouthing the words with a sad and sinking stomach. "Have fun."

"Oh," Josh says, suddenly much closer to his phone, and sounding a little pathetic. "No. Donna, I bought two tickets. I want….I'm asking you to come with me."

The room feels airless again, but it's a much better kind of airless, dizzy from shock and excitement rather than just disappointment.

"I figured maybe we could have that talk," he adds, and suddenly Helen is looking concerned, because Donna's definitely tearing up.

"Yeah," she answers, croaks really. "Yeah, that...when?"

"Tonight," he answers her. "Sam made it a condition. Flight's at eleven-thirty. Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Donna repeats. "I…Yes. Totally. Wait."

She can hear Josh's voice still chattering, sounding vaguely panicked, as she lowers her phone and looks Helen in the eye. "Ma'am?" she asks, then, "I mean, Helen?"

"Everything all right?" The First Lady in Waiting nods towards the phone.

"Can I have a week off?" Donna asks, flustered. "Starting in, like, an hour?"

It's not professional, not even a little bit, but there is not a single part of Donna that cares.

"A week?" Helen says. "I think I can manage without you for a week. Is everything….?"

"Just a second," Donna promises, and a tear or two is running over cheeks that are starting to hurt from smiling. Josh is still babbling, significantly panicky, as she lifts her phone to her ear again.

"-I didn't mean—"

"Joshua!" Her voice is dire enough to silence him immediately, and she has to hold back a giggle. "I had to ask Mrs Santos for the time off. I'll...I'll meet you at the airport?"

"Yeah." He sounds clearer, and she figures he must have put his phone back in handheld mode. "Can't wait."

"Don't forget to pack underwear," Donna reminds him tearfully. "I'll see you in a few hours."

"Definitely."

Her phone beeps to inform her he's hung up, and Donna's left grinning at the First Lady with tears ruining her makeup. "I'm going to Hawaii with Josh," she informs her, and Helen grins back with something like vicarious joy.

"About time you two had some time off," she tells her Chief of Staff, clearly savouring the euphemism. Her Chief of Staff takes a minute to savour it, too, picturing less sandy beaches and more soft beds. Soft beds and candlelit dinners. Big showers. CNN or C-Span turned down low in the background.

It's around C-Span that Donna has the idle thought that Josh had better be the last man in her life, because she's never going to find another one that finds Congressional voting an appropriate soundtrack for lovemaking.

She cannot stop smiling. "I agree," she tells Helen. "Josh has not, to my knowledge, had a day off since he got shot."

"Jesus," Helen says. "And you?"

"I took Christmas every year. Mostly." It takes another long moment for Donna to realize that there's a reason the First Lady looks so concerned, that maybe the proud tone had said something less positive than _I take more time off than my Jewish ex-boss._

"Hawaii," Helen repeats. "Remember to pack sunscreen, Donna."

"Of course, ma'am. Helen."

Helen smiles, small and fond. "Oh, get out of here," she says. "Go pack, and maybe, you know, ravish that man of yours before you have to leave for the airport."

"Yes, ma'am." Donna grins irrepresibly. "Uh. Helen."

"Go."

Donna is still smiling her face clean off as she lands in the cab back to CJ's apartment.


	4. Snippets 1

He has this way of raising his chin and looking you dead in the eye right before he tells you the devastating truth. He did it when he informed me that my desire to be "coupled up" would forever drown out my sense of self-worth. He does it every time he has to tell the President or Leo something he knows they're not gonna like. I hate it, when he does it, but the thing is, when Joshua Lyman is giving you that look with his jaw all tight, you know he's not pulling his punches. You know he's telling you something totally honestly, because even when you've fucked yourself up the creek with your paddle, he believes in giving people the truth.

* * *

I told him he had a year to convince me not to vote for Vinnick. It turned out all he needed was to convince Matt Santos to stage a stunt debate then get on national television, live.

He told me I should have been with him, working for the Real Thing, significant capitals intended. And much as I hate to admit it, his ego already being what it is, he was right. Bingo Bob might as well be one of those tacky cutouts we've got all over the office. Matt Santos is the real thing.

It's unfortunate that he's probably not going to win.

* * *

Josh is too thin.

This is something I've been noticing pretty much continuously since the MS scandal broke, with more alarm every time I get a free second to ogle him and realize his shirts are hanging that much looser. His face used to have a little flesh to it, almost baby fat, but since the debacle with Carrick it's like he doesn't eat anymore. He doesn't smile, either, even when he's laughing at things I wish he would take seriously.

It's worse now, on the campaign. I know why, of course. On the trail, Josh has to be harassed, hounded to consume so much as a single donut a day. When I was running his office, and therefor by default his entire life, I begged, borrowed, and stole enough burnt hamburgers and unappetizing salads to keep his BMI somewhere safe. Now he's working for Santos, in a room full of happy strangers and with no assistant as far as my information can tell, he's probably living on half a bag of popcorn and a seltzer a day, maybe a bagel on Sundays.

He had wrinkles even when we were first starting out, but now they seem like they've been graven in marble.

He looks...it's a disturbing combination of good and sickly, really. I can still see his pecs and the lines of his well-defined arms under his shirt, sometimes, but if he stands sideways I can tell he's taken his belt in a few loops. He's skinnier than ever, and that makes it hard to maintain an appropriately adversarial reaction to him. I see him, gone down another pant size, whey-faced and exhausted, and I want to tuck him up in bed and feed him a thousand brownies. And kale. And red meat burned to shoe leather, despite my personal feelings about beef and its proper handling.

I see him, and I want to take his hand, lead him away from all this. Kiss him, take him to my apartment, feed him up and then fuck him into oblivion. I care about helping to find the President's successor, but when I put what I'm doing up against the idea of running away with Josh, it really loses its luster.

That's a difference between me and him, one of the differences that keeps me from walking straight up to him and kissing him right on the lips. I don't think there's anyone in the world that could make him lose interest in this campaign. Josh is never going to put me before his work.

* * *

"I'm not jealous. I don't like it, and I do everything in my considerable power to sabotage it, but I'm not jealous."

He's not jealous. Really, he isn't. Kind of annoyed that Donna's having way more sex than he is, but not jealous of any of her boyfriends.

He doesn't need to be.

They can't date, something which he knows was impressed upon them separately by both Leo and CJ, and they can't have sex with each other, which is a downer, but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is that his relationship with Donna is the deepest and most significant of his entire life, she's his lodestone, and he knows that he's hers. He doesn't have to be having sex with her to know that. She doesn't have to be single for him to know that. Probably she could find some decent guy and Josh would be able to deal, because she should get to be happy. She shouldn't have to put her life on hold until their eight years are up.

At the end of those years, he's going to ask her to marry him, and hope to god she says yes, but even if she doesn't, he gets to spend eight, twelve, sixteen hours a day hanging out with her, talking with her, poring over obscure reports with her, marinating in the comfortable silence between them.

It's nice and all, that she's so astonishingly beautiful, and that he's desperately attracted to her, but the thing that's really important is that from the very first day, they clicked, and he's never fit so well with anyone in his entire life.


	5. The Good Cop

"I know I said it before, but it's true, so I think it bears repeating; you look amazing tonight." Josh's eyes are soft and his smile is gentle as he peers at her over the folder in his hands.

"You're trying to make me feel better about breaking up with Jack," Donna accuses, not without fondness. "You don't have to."

"I am doing that," he acknowledges, still smiling, "But also, it's true."

She might have looked amazing at the start of the night, with her hair still in shining curls around her face and her makeup intact, but now she knows for a fact that her mascara is smudged under her eyes and her hair is limp and flat and held back in a twist with a pilfered highlighter. She's wearing Josh's spare shirt over her gown, knotted at her waist, and it's three in the morning.

"You're sweet. Don't lie to me."

"I don't lie to you, Donna. Except when it's a matter of national security." He closes his eyes, rests them on the heels of his hands. "God. Think we can get out of here yet?"

"Leo took off for his hotel thirty minutes ago," Donna reveals. "They'll call us if there are any new developments, but I think you should go to bed."

"I think you should go with me."

There's a long silence, Donna staring open mouthed at Josh, who's still scrubbing his hands over his face. It's only when he stops and his vision clears that he sees her face, and realizes what she heard in his words. "Oh, God, no. I meant like—"

"I think I should, too."

He's the one who stares now. No one's blinking, in the office of the Deputy White House Chief of Staff. "I didn't mean—"

"I did."

Her eyes are wide and very blue, set off by his pale checked shirt and the deeper, shimmering navy of her gown. Under the lights of the ballroom they'd sparkled, as he'd twirled her around in a slow, close waltz. All night they've been standing too close, speaking in low whispers with their faces too close together, and it shouldn't be a surprise that it's come to a head, but he's still breathless.

"You just broke up with Jack."

She smiles, the same, clear, open smile she'd worn when the President took her aside with a raised eyebrow and said, "No man is worth your honor, Donnatella," and she'd blushed and shaken her head, and then, with a warm, fatherly hand on her shoulder, the leader of the free world had told her, "Don't ever do that again."

"There is a man who's worth my honor," she says now, stepping around Josh's desk, still looking straight into his eyes. "And the way I know that is that you'd never let me lie for you."

"As a point of fact, I've ordered you to lie for me," Josh corrects, giving her a half grin.

She shakes her head. "Not about something like that."

Her hands are landing on his shoulders even as he begins to list the many and various dishonorable ways in which he's asked her to flout the truth. "Four hours after I hired you, I told you to tell Margaret that I'd lost my campaign badge. You walked right up to her with the thing around your neck. Later that week, I told you to lie to Mandy about a lunch meeting I didn't actually have. You lie to reporters all the time. You've lied to CJ five times on my behalf, lied to Amy like...fifty times, all of them because I—"

"The ones with Amy, I actually enjoyed," Donna tells him, seriously. And then she leans down and fits her mouth over his, capturing the parted lips and his next words.

She hears him suck in a breath through his nose, feels his hands come up to her shoulders, feels the faint trembling of his jaw. Then she feels his head tilt, his mouth open under hers in a rush of warm breath, faintly sour with champagne. They kiss for a long, slow moment, until her back starts to cramp and she has to draw back, straightening.

Josh stares up at her, face open and childlike with joy and surprise.

"You look amazing, tonight," Donna tells him, stroking gently up from his shoulder to his jaw. Her ring finger traces the soft divot of his dimple, and it deepens suddenly as he smiles.

"I hate to ask, but is there any chance I'm gonna get to fall asleep holding you?" he asks, his voice so soft it almost breaks.

"I think," Donna informs him, straight-faced but with laughter in her voice, "That you could get better than even odds on that."

"Let's go to bed," he says, eyes glittering with amusement, and then he's surging up, standing and pulling her flush against him. "Let's go to bed," he repeats, unimaginably tender, and kisses her again, very softly, very quickly.


	6. Sick Day

"Donna, I need the Morgenstern file, that memo on SR-533, and ideally some kind of a breakfast food before we hit lunchtime. Do you think you could make that happen?" Josh breezed past Donna's cubicle, dropping a small pile of folders into her inbox and favoring her with a sarcastically dimpled grin. Then he stopped, gripping the doorframe, and frowned at her. "You okay?"

"I will bring you a bagel," Donna told him, grey-faced and monotone. "The file is on your desk, and the memo is here—" she fished up a piece of paper and pushed it into his hand "—you have a meeting with Leo in five minutes and then you've got an hour to get up to speed on the cuts from 533 before you meet with Senator O'Leary. Go away."

"Donna," Josh said, leaning in, "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine, Joshua."

"Cause you're looking a little, you know..."

"Joshua?" Donna favored him with a baleful stare.

"Go away?"

"Thank you."

She turned back to her computer and winced slightly, and Josh observed her, stationary and confused, for another long moment before he turned away to his office.

Under normal circumstances a sick Donna was a communicative Donna, willing to enumerate her symptoms and explain in exhaustive detail why they meant Josh should be nicer to her. If she wasn't talking, wasn't even acknowledging how visibly badly felt, she was either hung over or…

Josh blinked, picked up his planner, and checked the date.

Ah.

* * *

Donna returned from lunch, where she'd ingested a single yogurt and two glasses of gingerale, and collapsed miserably into her chair, winning a few glorious moments of amusement as she spun herself back and forth. Then she caught sight of the line of items neatly arranged behind her keyboard.

A bottle of Advil, a two chocolate bars stacked one on top of the other, a bottle of water, and a note folded into thirds.

 _Take the day_ , he'd written, _Ginger said she'd handle our calls. I'll see you tomorrow morning. - Josh_


	7. Unrealistic Conversations

"Okay, but say we ever did talk you into running for President. What would Josh's title be?" CJ takes another luxuriant sip of her glass of gin, grinning.

Donna pretends to think for a while, before she says, very seriously, "Chief of Staff."

"That's no fun," CJ goads. "First Husband? First Gentleman?"

"No, I think he'd pretty much be the Chief of Staff," Donna decides. "If he were ever going to be any such thing, which he isn't, because I'm not running for office again."

"Your district loves you, the media adores you, you're a real live American Dream, I don't see why not?"

Donna peers into her glass, following the golden glimmers of a few bubbles as they trace their way to the surface of the wine. "I don't like it, CJ. I mean, I like making a difference and I like being heard, but...I don't want to be the public face. I want to do what my staff is doing, cutting deals and doing research and not just...chasing campaign donations and looking pretty at roll-call. I ran because there was an issue I wanted to fix, and I have, but now...I can do more backstage. And I never, ever want to have to make the kinds of choices I saw in the Oval Office."

"You've really thought about it." CJ isn't laughing anymore.

"Josh brought it up. Not advocating it or anything, just as a possibility. To see what I thought."

"And you told him...?"

"That, pretty much. It's possible that I also included some reasoning about our sex life and how much alone time we would or would not have."

CJ nods. "And what if Josh decides to run for something?"

Donna shakes her head, just a little. "Josh...The President said this thing to me once, and I think it sums it up pretty well; Josh doesn't want to be the guy. He wants the be the guy the guy counts on."

"You don't think he would?"

"I really don't." Her face gets very soft as she muses. "Which is not to say I don't think he couldn't. I think he'd be amazing, but Josh...he swaggers and talks like a macho guy, but he doesn't really want the attention, you know? I think he'd be magnificent as President, and also completely miserable."

"No more White House for the Moss-Lyman dynasty?" CJ surmises, and Donna giggles again.

"I didn't say that," she contradicts. "We have high hopes for Noah and Eleanor. First Jewish President? First Jewish woman President? What do you think?"

"I think Noah's too much of a sweetie for it," CJ says.

"Just like his dad," Donna echoes, a little sadly. "Yeah, President Eleanor Moss-Lyman sounds good."

* * *

"What—"

"He got ketchup on his shirt."

"And he didn't have—"

"It was his emergency shirt."

"And no one could find—"

"Nope."

"...Wow."

"Yeah."

Joshua Lyman is pacing in the bullpen, wearing a t-shirt from an intern's gym bag, and although he has not yet noticed, his assistant and most of her friends have gathered in the doorways of the Operations department. They are not working, mostly not talking. They are observing.

The t-shirt is too small.

"He has _biceps_ ," Ginger hisses, as those august muscles bunch and flex against the weight of a three-inch binder full of paper.

"And triceps and pecs and _abs_ ," Nancy sighs, fanning herself slightly.

Carol, who's managing a more circumspect sideways-glancing thing while she pretends to study the notes on her legal pad, licks her lips. "I don't understand how we didn't know about this. Donna, how did we not know about this?"

"Well, most of the time he wears actual clothes," Donna reasons, trying not to sound too overtly territorial. She did, after all, know about _this_.

"And what a shame that is," Bonnie coos.

Ginger nods. "Almost makes his hair not...y'know, ridiculous."

"There's nothing wrong with Josh's hair," Donna protests, in an undertone. "Your boss is bald."

"My boss also doesn't have a six-pack," Ginger points out. "I think everyone should have to say something if they know that one of the guys has a six-pack."

"Sam does," Donna offers.

Bonnie waves this away. "Sam is old news. Everyone knows Sam is pretty. We want new meat."

"Well, you can't have Josh." Donna realizes, as her colleagues give her knowing looks, that that statement had not, perhaps, been made in the spirit of neutrality. "I mean, he's a nightmare to schedule even when he's single, he'll make me buy your Christmas present, and besides, he's everyone's boss."

"He makes you do his Christmas shopping?" Carol asks, incredulous.

"No, but it's easier for me to pick everything out of a catalogue for him. He buys his mom's present and mine on his own."

"His mother's and his...assistant's." Ginger's tone is contemplative. "You know, girls, when Donna says we can't have him, I think it's cause she's got him perfectly trained and doesn't want anything to disrupt that."

"Well that's clearly not it," Bonnie vetoes.

"Why not?"

Carol snorts, makes a doodle on her pad. "Josh Lyman? Is not perfectly trained."

"He is not," Donna agrees. "Besides, did I not say he is not just my boss? He's also your boss."

"And everyone's boss in the West Wing, technically," Carol agrees. "But no one really cares about the rules here, and from a PR standpoint the only one of us who really can't have him is you."

"Oh, yeah, that's a good point," Ginger agrees.

"This is all a moot point," Donna announces, in her very best repressive voice, "since Josh has not, to my knowledge, expressed an interest in dating anyone in the West Wing."

"To your knowledge," Bonnie points out.

Josh closes the binder with another distractingly pleasant flexing of muscles, and sets it on Donna's desk. Then he fishes up a memo and looks up, obviously searching for someone. When his eyes light on Donna he grins and waves her over.

The assistants look on as he points out something on the page, and as Donna leans in to examine it, his hand lands on the small of her back, thumb sweeping gently back and forth as they talk.

"Oh, yeah," Ginger remarks, softly. "Totally not interested in anyone in the West Wing."

"There's no way she didn't know how hot he is," Carol says, in a reasonable tone. "But you can't expect a girl to advertise her...man...person. You know what I mean, of course she's not gonna put him on the market."

* * *

"No, but, seriously."

Josh is staring at her, at his amazing, fabulous wife, this stunning Amazon who has loved him for years, through the best and worst days of his life, who has given him two gorgeous children, who is saying—

"I think this is it. You're my guy."

"Donnatella..."

"Joshua."

He keeps staring, transfixed by her shining eyes and warm cheeks. The kids are asleep down the hall and his wife, the woman who has inadvertently defined his adult life, has just told him to run for President.

"This is supposed to be Sam."

Donna shrugs. "I know. But with Ainsely sick, you think he's ever going to run? She can't follow him, and he'd never leave her."

"What about the kids?"

The snapping, saucy look in her blue eyes makes his skin tingle. "I mean, Ellie was basically born on a campaign bus," she reminds him, pragmatically. "The kids love you and they love adventure and we'd bring them along."

Stability, he wants to say. Regular schooling. "We moved up here so that they wouldn't have to go to DC schools," he gripes, trying to cover the mounting excitement in his stomach. It feels a little like heartburn, but he's felt it before. He knows what it is.

"We moved up here so you could teach at Yale," Donna corrects him.

"I've never held an elected office," he says, delivering it like the coup de grâce. It's his trump card.

"Yeah, but you were Deputy Chief of Staff for eight years and then Chief of Staff for eight more. You know more about running the country than all the other potential candidates combined."

"Including, you know, the sitting President." The sarcasm is rich in his voice.

"Who's had his job for four years," Donna counters, and she's getting that hard, blazing look in her eye. "So help me, Joshua, I want to vote for you for President in November."

He's turning it over in his mind, not even meaning to, but he can feel the potential, the thrill. The part of him that ditched Hoynes and dragged Santos out of nowhere and didn't sleep for a week trying to get a healthcare bill passed is champing at the bit, plunging at the gate, ready to do whatever he has to to make a change in the world.

But the part of him that spent eight years loving Donna from afar wants nothing more than this house and this bed, and her in his arms with his kids next door, and Christmas in Manchester and summer vacations visiting CJ and Danny and Sam and Ainsley and all their beautiful children playing together on the beach in Santa Monica.

"I don't know, Donna," he tells her, quietly. "I just...I don't think..."

"You're the Real Thing, Joshua."

The words, the significant capitals, ring in the darkness of their bedroom. It's simultaneously the nicest and the scariest thing anyone's ever said to him, and it makes everything frighteningly real.

"You don't have to decide right away,"

she's telling him, soft and gentle. "But if you do...I'm not the only one who thinks we can do this. You won't be alone, Josh."


	8. A Beginning

For the first month of her tenure with the campaign, Donna lives in Josh's room.

They play Rock Paper Scissors for the bed on nights when they're awake enough to care about Implications and Consequences, and most other fall side-by-side onto a succession of identical white duvets. This is how they end up with the same morning routine; wake up at 5:45, coffee, teeth, two minute shower, stumbling out the door by 6:25. Because they're often the last to bed and the first up, no one notices their living arrangement before Donna goes on salary and starts being officially roomed with Margaret.

By the time she comes back from the Free Ride Diversion, Josh is sleeping with Mandy, so Donna begs CJ for a share of her floor until she gets reinstated.

Once they move to Washington for Transition, though, Donna's in an odd situation because she's got to find a place to live while simultaneously working sixteen to twenty hour days. CJ's equally homeless, and so when Josh offers her his spare room, she accepts gratefully.

Living with Josh in the more traditional sense is nice. In the early days of the campaign it had felt like sharing a dorm, or maybe more like an extended sleepover. Here she can cook and do laundry and laugh at the ongoing battle between Joshua and his coffeemaker. It's nearing the end of November with no feasible apartment options on Donna's plate, when Josh finally suggests, "You could just...y'know, stay here."

It sounds like an awesome plan, frankly, and Donna makes vaguely agreeable noises while inside she's jumping for joy. That lasts right up til she tells CJ, who brings the hammer of reason crashing down on the fragile fantasy.

"Are you out of your mind!" she exclaims, slamming her hands down on the cafe table. "You cannot live with that man!"

"He's really not that bad a roommate," Donna protests, but CJ cuts her off with a shake of her head.

Bug-eyed with horror, the older woman leans across the table and hisses, " _You are his assistant!_ "

"So?" Donna asks, naïve. "I can afford to go halvsies with him, my salary's not that low."

"Donna, sweet girl, what happens when some enterprising hack with a camera snaps a shot of you two leaving for work together? Do you know what kind of headlines that makes?" CJ spreads her hands out in the universal gesture of disclaimer. "You can't live with him. You shouldn't be living with him now. You can stay with me until you find a place."

"Okay," Donna agrees, cautiously. "What kinds of headlines does it make?"

"White House Staffer in Sex Scandal with Leggy Blonde Secretary," CJ pronounces dryly, and Donna can actually hear the significant capitals. "We're talking character assassination, accusations of nepotism, you'd never work in Washington again. Josh's career would probably be okay in the long run but if someone were to find out now, no way does he get hired in January. You need to go back to his place, pack your stuff, and I'll come get you."

So they finish their lunches, CJ gives her a significant look, and they part ways at the door.

Josh is still at the office when she reaches his apartment, and maybe it's for the best. It doesn't take her long to load her life back into the huge suitcase and duffle-bag combo that had carried her through all fifty states, and then she's loading those things into CJ's car. The hotel where she's camped out is walking distance from the Capitol district, and after Donna sets down her things she takes the spare key card and heads back to the OEOB.

It's been barely four hours since she took off for her lunch date, and nothing about the actual weather has changed, but it feels like a gloomier day.

Josh greets her with an exuberant joke about getting lost. "I mean, not that you don't deserve the time off, but we've got a country to run."

"Josh," she says, in the dire tone of voice she knows will always shut him up. "I may have mentioned the thing from this morning to CJ."

"The thing? The apartment thing?"

"That thing," she confirms. "And apparently it's not a good idea."

"It's a great idea," Josh scoffs. "DC real estate is a nightmare."

"Yeah, but apparently there are reporters who know where you live," Donna hints, unwilling to give voice to the words "Sex Scandal with Leggy Blonde Secretary".

"Well, yeah, I mean, Danny came over for..." He trails off, stops. "You mean—"

"It's not a good idea," Donna hurriedly repeats. "Career-destroyingly not good. Or so I'm told."

Josh gets a sour expression, sighs. "Yeah, you're right," he agrees. "So we've really got to find you a place by January, I guess."

"I already packed my stuff, Josh. That's why I was late. CJ's letting me stay with her until I find someplace." Just saying the words feels gutting. Her voice actually cracks, and Josh looks about how she sounds.

"You're already moved out," he says, raspier than he had sounded just a moment before. "That was...fast."

She gives him a painful smile. "Career-destroyingly," she repeats, and holds out his spare key.

He looks at it blankly for a long moment, then shakes his head. "Nah," he says, "Keep it."


	9. Die Lorelei

The line of men in white ties and tails filed out on to the stage and Josh grinned in anticipation.

"Who is this man, and what has he done with our Joshua?" Mrs Bartlett cracked, down the line of seats.

"Shh," Josh chastised, eyes fixed on the stage.

Donna smiled a little at him, before she turned back to her program. The evening was slated contain a wide assortment of languages and styles of music, culminating with an arrangement of Queen, all on the theme of the seductive power of love. The men of the West Wing had done their fair share of bitching and moaning when the First Lady had organized this field trip, but Josh had been notably silent on that count, instead expressing an enthusiasm that put him well into Mrs Barlett's good books. Donna herself had done a little research into the group performing and was tentatively looking forward to it.

The men had, while she perused the program, organized themselves into a double horseshoe shape, and with little fuss or drama launched into something old and Latin-sounding.

It was a captivating sound, each chord flawlessly tuned and timed, and quickly Donna forgot to follow along with the translation in her lap, staring mesmerized at the golden pool of light that was the stage. The highest parts were sung with a perfect clarity, the deepest notes rich and warm, resonating in her chest. It was, in a way, the closest thing to a religious experience Donna had ever had.

A hand took one of hers.

Donna startled a little, and found Josh gazing at her, with an unreadable expression on his face. The words of the piece suddenly registered with her, her fluency in Italian cutting past the haunting beauty of the music. _O dolorosa gioia, O soave dolore_...

Oh joyous sorrow, oh sweet suffering, that makes this soul sad, yet causes it to die happy!

Maybe he knew the text, maybe he didn't, but for Donna it rang poignant.

They held each others gaze unblinkingly, until the audience broke their reverie with a roar of applause.

Donna looked away, back to the booklet on her lap, and only when she'd broken away could she breathe again. Josh still held her hand, and as the next piece began he squeezed it, and tried to draw it back, but she held on doggedly.

After intermission the concert took a distinct turn for the more humorous, and Donna found herself tapping her toes and smiling along. By the end of the evening the meditative feeling of the beginning was broken, but when she looked at Josh she still felt the odd vibration they'd shared earlier, a sensation that muted her, and while their friends and colleagues chattered around them, she allowed him to smooth her coat over her shoulders and wordlessly turned to take his arm.

"That was a beautiful concert, don't you think, Donna?" The First Lady asked, and as she searched to locate her tongue, Donna leaned into Josh's side, let her cheek hover near the shoulder of his wool coat.

"Transcendent," she said, finally.


	10. On Couches

"There's probably only, what, like, six other people in this building?" Josh wonders absently, twirling a pen in his hand as he combs through the bill in front of him.

"Well, no," Donna corrects him, "Since there's the Residence upstairs and the First Family's whole detail, plus us, Jeff, Carter, and Tony, and probably at least one other crazy person in the council's office."

"Okay, so there's six people in the West Wing," Josh amends, putting down his pen and pressing the heel of his hand into his eyes. "My point is this—why don't I have a couch in here?"

"Your point is that you don't have a couch?" Donna echoes, not wholly certain if it's her ears or Josh's wits that have failed.

"No," he denies, "But I mean, Sam has a couch. Leo has a couch. CJ got one, the President has two, Ed and Larry both have couches, why am I the only person in the whole senior staff who doesn't have a couch?"

"Honestly?" Donna offers, observing the tousled nimbus of his hair and the crinkles in his shirt.

"Hon—wait, there's a reason? Donnatella Moss, there's an actual reason I don't have a couch and you've been holding out on me?" His expression is actively accusatory, almost childlike, eyebrows raised high and the corners of his mouth tilted slightly down. He bears, and she will never, ever tell him this, a slight but definitive resemblance to the Beaker Muppet.

"Yes, Josh," Donna sighs. For a moment she considers dragging this out, leading him on, but it's getting to be two in the morning, soon, and the fight has mostly left her for the evening. "You don't have a couch because I told them not to give you one," she admits.

If he'd looked accusing before, it's nothing to his expression now, his mouth invitingly slack and his eyes sharp with recrimination. "Never would have pegged you for a traitor," he says, bitterly.

If she were a lesser woman, one without her wisdom and poise and knowledge of Josh, she might take that expression seriously, might feel stung by the acerbic edge to his tone. What she is, though, is the woman who's seen him at both his best and his worst, and everything in between, so instead of denying it she replies, cheerfully, "Yep, that's me, I'm a regular Mata Hari."

"That...Donna, I don't think that means what you think it means," Josh smirks, his serious mien broken.

"Mata Hari was a stage name used by Margaretha Zella, a Dutch woman who spied for Germany during World War II," Donna corrects again, keeping her eyes on her own copy of the bill. "She was originally a French agent, but after her betrayal she was tried and executed for espionage, which was ironic since the French blackmailed her to get her to spy for them in the first place." She meets Josh's wide eyes. "The other thing is because she was a dancer and a courtesan in Paris."

"Huh," Josh says, clearly mulling over the new information. It's been a long, long time since he bothered to ask her where she learned something, and it's kind of nice, that he just accepts her as an authority on anything and everything. She basks momentarily in the glow of his attention. "Where'd she get the name, then. Mata Hari?"

"It's Indonesian for Eye of the Sun," Donna informs him. "She traveled to the Indies with her husband when she was young."

"Huh," Josh repeats. "That's very interesting, but it doesn't explain why you cheated me out of my couch."

Donna sighs again. Of course he hasn't forgotten, Josh forgets nothing he doesn't explicitly want to forget, like boring and unimportant meetings, or the names of her boyfriends. "If you had a couch, would you ever go home?" she asks, leadingly.

"Well," Josh drawls, leaning back in his chair and thinking. "I mean...no, probably not."

"My point exactly." With the surety of one who has delivered a coup de grâce, Donna returns to the bill, noting and circling a misspelling of "indigent".

"I sleep at the office anyway," Josh argues. "I just have to do it face first at this desk instead of horizontally, on a couch."

"Yeah, and that's why you don't do it more often," she points out. "Cause as of right now it hurts your back and makes you feel hungover for forty-eight hours, so you're more likely to go home and sleep in your actual bed."

"You're a cruel woman," he decides. "And you know what, I'm not the only one losing out here. You screwed yourself, too."

"Did I," Donna remarks, tonelessly.

"Bet your ass you did," Josh confirms, his voice surging and then drawing back, falling into his throat. "Imagine, if you will. Instead of filing cabinets and a tv that you claim raises my blood pressure, we could have a couch. Think of the naps, Donnatella. Think of the glorious hours of..." His face glazes a little, as he wanders off into one of the odd tangential worlds that occupy his brain in the wee hours of morning. "...sleep," he finishes, lamely, and it doesn't take a Bachelor's in Joshua Studies to know that that is not what he was about to say.

"In a perfect world we'd actually go home and sleep every night," Donna reminds him. "In a bed. Like human beings do."

"See, this is my point exactly." Josh pounces, shaken clear out of his stupor. "Tonight, for example. We have to stay here and get this bill finalized come hell or high water, so we can send it up to the Hill tomorrow. When we finish, at like, four, probably, there's going to be four hours before we're supposed to be back at our desks. If we had a couch, we could just sack out, grab four hours, and be ready to go in the morning. Since we don't have a couch—"

"We're going to sleep on Sam and CJ's couches," Donna finishes for him. "How is this screwing me? I'd be on CJ's couch anyway."

There are times when Josh's eyes get...darker, somehow. Hooded is maybe the right word, like his lids are at half-mast. He's looking at her now in the way that makes her stomach churn. "Would you," he says, softly, almost crooning. It's almost as though he's thinking out loud, mesmerized by her.

"Two people on one couch is kind of a squish," she reminds him, her heart in her mouth. It seems like he's finally gone there, seems like he's waiting for her to meet him, but what if she's wrong? What if she's judged it wrong and just meant that he'd give her their office couch and find his own?

"A squish," he echoes, amused. "Not always a bad thing though, am I right?"

"No," she breathes.

"Maybe even sometimes...kind of nice?" he offers, exquisitely softly. Her brain can barely even accept that she's thinking of him as exquisite, let alone the deep, shivering feeling his voice is evoking.

"Maybe," she agrees, in the merest of whispers. The moment is telescoping, lengthening without otherwise altering its substance, and the further it stretches the more certain she is; they've just crossed the event horizon. This thing, whatever it is, that they've ignored and balanced and flirted with, is happening, right this very moment.

"And that right there is how you've screwed yourself out of my couch," Josh says abruptly. His voice isn't normal, almost strangled really, but it's normal enough to feel like a harness yanking Donna back from the edge. This is the chance to laugh it off, let him take a step back, then reel herself in. Pull herself away again.

"How about we finish the bill before four, and go find somewhere to sleep that's better than kind of nice?" she offers, low voiced, not even trying to disguise her intent.

Josh's eyes are wide, watching her with something between admiration and shock, and she feels her heart starting to pick up violently, finding the rapid, crushing tempo of potential rejection.

"How many pages've you got left?" he asks, abandoning his simulacrum of a casual voice.

"Mmm..." It takes so much effort to keep her fingers from trembling, as she pages slowly through the document on her lap. Every single moment of this has just been transformed from flirtation into foreplay, and the adrenaline is pumping, humming along in her veins. "Sixteen." She flickers her lids at him.

"Ten bucks says we can get this done in thirty minutes," Josh swears.

"Ten bucks and a bottle of Chardonnay say I finish first," Donna ups, smiling.

"Deal," he says, and reaches out to smack her palm without even looking.

"Deal," Donna echoes, and settles back into her work, palm stinging pleasantly, heart keeping a steady tempo in her ears.


	11. Election Night 2016

"How," Donna breathed, staring, transfixed, at the television screen. Her hand was starting to cramp where it was clenched tight over Josh's, her face was chill and burning with tears, and her stomach was a cold, sick ball inside her.

Four states colored blue, four states that between them had only fifty-one electoral votes, not enough to cross the finish line. There was no way, no road to victory, only a red bar inching towards the middle line while its blue sibling stagnated, a visual metaphor that struck a little too deep.

"It's over," Josh said, softly. "I can't believe this."

He was dry-eyed, still, his expression open and almost curious, but frozen, even as his eyes darted from state to state on the map. "It's over," he repeated.

"Josh," Donna gasped out, and then she curled in on herself, surrendering to the painful cramp of terror and desolation that gripped her stomach, her intestines, her lungs and her heart. Her shoulders shook with sobs and her eyes ached, and she tried to clamp down on her wails so that the kids, the kids who'd tried so hard to stay up but had gone to bed an hour ago, the kids who'd trailed them to the polls today, their beautiful son and daughters, wouldn't be woken. This was not the world her children should ever have to wake up in. This was some horrifying alternate reality, the prelude to a post-apocalyptic dystopian future.

Josh's warm, strong hands on her shoulders couldn't calm her, even as a glimmer of hot, angry, miserable resolve sprouted in her stomach. The world might be ending, maybe literally, but she was with the man she loved, the man who'd taught her so much about life and about service, the man who'd given her three babies and a career and not one but two Presidents she'd been honored to serve. They were together now, and would be tomorrow. Their children would wake up in the morning to a bleaker world, but still a world where they were loved by their parents, where their Grandpa Jed and Grandma Abby and Grammy Riva would burn down creation for them, where they had heat and running water and food on the table.

The yawning maw of the future could take a lot of things away, but not her family. Not the people she loved.

She wouldn't let it.


	12. Snippets 2: Stocking Stuffers

"Because it's stupid movie," Josh insists, belligerent. Donna sighs, pats him lightly on the shoulder, and smiles placatingly at the President.

"He's in a mood," she mouths, but it's as though Josh can hear her. He turns a few inches to level a truly unappreciative stare at her, before turning back to President Bartlett.

"It has nothing to do with reality," he begins to list, "The whole plot is contrived. Antonio Salieri was friends with Mozart, he didn't kill him, and the d minor Mass was commissioned by a Viennese Count for his dead wife. It's sensationalized bullshit, and all the music in it's been translated into English. You wanna watch crap like that on your own time, that's fine, sir, but you're not going to—to—disseminate it like it's some kind of educational experience. Not on my watch."

"We're learning new things about Joshua here every day," the President says, with the raised eyebrows and careful tone that tells Donna, at least, that Josh is dancing right up against the line they do not cross.

* * *

"You're lucky," Congresswoman Marshall says, in the sort of cooing voice older women use to talk about grandchildren and well-caught husbands.

"Lucky?" Donna echoes, absently.

"Your Joshua," the Congresswoman says, breezily. "He's a one-woman kind of man, you'll never have to go through something like that." She nods to the screen, where the Speaker is doing his best to smile and dodge the most awkward questions about his affair.

"I never really thought about it," Donna tells her. "I trust him."

"Oh, all of Washington's known he was yours since Bartlett was inaugurated the first time," the Congresswoman assures her. "The Joshua that left John Hoynes and the Joshua who came back to town with the President were hardly the same man. You worked wonders with him, my dear."

"He wasn't mine," Donna protests. "Not back then."

"I was a senator's wife, back then," Congresswoman Marshall tells her, blithely, "I remember the gossip. Poor Josh and Mandy Hampton, that was a bit of an on-dit. She was never very nice to him, as I'm sure you know, and he tried with her, he really did. Then they go off to campaign for Jed Bartlett, and by the inauguration they aren't speaking and Josh has this wonderful young woman whipping him into shape. Anyone with eyes could see he adored you."

* * *

They are not dating.

Of course they're not dating; the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House could never, ever date his Senior Assistant. That would be slimy, unprincipled. Totally inappropriate.

They're not dating.

Which is not to say they've never been on a date.

Donna keeps a careful tally, in the back of the diary that holds every secret thought she won't share with another human soul. Every time they go for a meal, every state dinner she spends on his arm, every time they sit on CJ's couch and watch a baseball game she taped for him, his arm slung around her shoulder and a beer bottle passing wordlessly between their hands.

Since the beginning of the administration, the first time Josh had bribed her with dinner and sealed the deal with a boyish grin and the words "It's a date," they've been on sixty-eight dates.

* * *

"Jo-osh!"

It's comforting that after two years of marriage she's still shouting his name the same way she was on the day they met. Josh scratches their neighbor's dog behind its velvety, floppy ear and calls back, "What is it?"

"Josh," Donna says, striding into the room with a dress in each hand, "I need your help. Which one of these says, I'm sorry your heartless, autocrat husband is finally dead?"

"I'm sorry?" Josh asks, watching bemusedly as she holds first one, then a second unremarkable black dress in front of herself for his inspection. "Is this about Chigorin?"

"The President can't go to his funeral," Donna reminds him. "So it's been shunted off on the First Lady, which means I have to go. Which of these dresses says-"

"That you're sorry he's dead? I don't know, but I could tell you which one makes this heartless, autocrat husband-"

"That's the worst line you've ever used on me," Donna cuts him off, "And that's including that horrible stimulus package pun."

Josh grins lecherously at her. "Hey, babe," he starts, cocking his head roguishly to the side, "Can you come over here? I'd like to get your opinion on my poll."

"I'm gonna divorce you," Donna informs him, but she's not able to hide her giggle.

"Impervious," Josh claims.

* * *

The Oval Office is an important place where important things happen. It's also a place where a gleefully malicious old academic, otherwise known as the Commander in Chief, engages in the kind of ritualistic torture banned by the Geneva Convention.

Well. Maybe not, but it's damn hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Tonight he's punishing Josh, CJ, and Donna. Donna doesn't usually merit punishment of any kind, and if she did, he'd ordinarily be prepared to acknowledge that working for Josh was punishment enough, but tonight she's feeling the business end of a lecture on the history and development of the modern snowshoe.

Possibly she's not feeling it anymore. It's nearing two in the morning, and her eyes have glazed right over. Josh and CJ are in better shape to look at, but that might just be the practice they got at grad school paying off.

"The indigenous people of North America developed the most advanced and diverse snowshoes prior to the 20th century, you know," the President says, merrily. Josh blinks, with a vaguely sick look on his face, and Claudia Jean heaves a slow and measured sigh. Donna's eyes are half-closed now, like a very small child at the end of a bedtime story. She's listing dangerously towards Josh, perched side by side as they are on the couch.

As he lists the various important features of a traditional snowshoe—lightweight frame, snow-shedding lattice, large surface area—the President keeps a weather eye on his Deputy and the young woman who loves him. It takes barely another five minutes before she's out cold, and a minute more before she slumps over, into Josh's shoulder.

The yenta in Josiah Bartlett's soul cackles gleefully, and he glances at his watch.

Not quite two AM.


	13. All in the Family

It's possible, Josh sometimes thinks, that he's not supposed to love being a dad so much.

Many of the guys he knows, up to and including both the Presidents he's served, have loved their children immensely, but haven't loved the hassles of raising them so much. He gets it, he does, the first few weeks with Noah had been a hell of sleepless nights smearing into bleary, vaguely nauseous days, but no matter how fussy the baby is or how tired he gets, he loves it, on some level.

When Noah was born he and Donna had both taken time off, but when Donna's leave was up, she'd gone back. Josh had thought about it, talked it over with Donna and Matt and Helen, and handed in his resignation.

He's not not working—he lectures at a couple of the DC universities and is in the midst of writing a book on the changing values and demographics of the American electorate—but most days he's able to be home, with his son, this tiny person that he doesn't totally know yet, but he's starting to.

Noah has recently begun to learn to stand, and although he lacks the balance to take his first wobbling steps, that certainly doesn't prevent him from hauling ass around the apartment at a speed Josh would never previously have believed a baby could be capable of. Between his high-velocity butt-shuffle and a recently acquired propensity for inserting objects into his mouth to gather data, the littlest Lyman is a true handful. Frequently a sticky, cranky, or smelly handful.

When he teaches, Josh brings Noah along, holding him on his hip as he paces and talks, or letting his various TAs and favorite students cuddle him. He is, Josh claims, going to be the great political operative of his generation, with the way he sits so silently and never fusses, wide eyes following his father back and forth across the front of the lecture hall.

"Of course he watches Daddy," Donna puts in, dryly, "because Daddy's the silliest thing in the room."

She's smiling widely as she says it, though.

Babies, Josh had read, during the earlier stages of Donna's pregnancy, usually resemble their fathers at birth, some kind of evolutionary holdover from days when males of the species were liable to kill any offspring that wasn't theirs. Noah hadn't really resembled anything. A very angry turnip, maybe, or a wizened apple of some kind, but now bones are starting to form, and he's starting to take after Donna, something which Josh publicly laments and privately enjoys immensely. Donnatella Moss is the most stunningly beautiful woman he knows, and any kid of hers should be blessed with as many of her characteristics as possible.

He does have the Lyman dimples, though, and Josh remembers well the first time he'd ever flashed them. Donna had squealed loudly from their bedroom, and when Josh had come careening through the door she'd been bent over Noah, who was lying on his back, smiling and grabbing at the shiny, dangling strands of her hair.  
"You like Mommy's hair, buddy?" Josh had asked him, taking up a position at Donna's side and staring down his beautiful family. "I like it too. Mommy's gorgeous."

"Mommy recognizes flattery when she hears it," Donna informs him, she turns and pulls him into a slow, luxuriant kiss nonetheless. "He has your smile," she says, finally, happily. "I was really hoping he would."

"As long as he doesn't have anything else of mine," Josh half-jokes, sitting down and lifting the baby into his lap, letting his son grab his index finger and gum it fiercely. "He can't be teething already, can he?"

"My mom says he's got a couple months left," Donna tells him, with a shrug. "Maybe he's just precocious. Wonder whose fault that would be."

* * *

He's in California when the hospital calls, telling him that his wife has gone into labor.

By the time he lands at National and gets to her side, their third child, their second daughter, has been born.

She's a beautiful little girl, insofar as a newborn can be, with blue eyes and a shock of dark hair, and to Josh's surprise, a name.

"I'm sorry," Donna says, only mildly contrite, nursing their tiniest child. "I mean, I couldn't exactly help it."

"I thought we'd decided on Evelyn," Josh points out, too enthralled by his new daughter to sound truly petulant. "Or Rebecca."

"We had," Donna agrees, "But you were supposed to fill out the birth certificate."

"Is this—I mean, I thought that thing about your mom was just-"

"Vincent's full name is Vicenzo Desperado Moss," she says, flatly. "Or it was. He legally changed it when he and Annabeth got married."

Josh stares at his wife, who has the grace to look embarrassed. "So, Donnatella Grace-"

"Dad picked my middle name and Mom picked my first name from a list Dad approved."

"And where did you get Eglantine?" Josh asks, touching the thusly named baby on the back of one tiny, silk fist.

"It's a flower," Donna explains, somewhat defensively. "A kind of rose, with pink flowers and leaves that smell like apples. It's a good source of Vitamin C."

"Yeah, okay," Josh agrees, choosing to pass over all the available jokes, "but why did you name our daughter after it?"

"I was reading A Midsummer Night's Dream," she admits, "I guess it stuck."

Josh can't help but laugh at that. Donna smiles unsurely back at him, and he reaches out to cup the tiny dark head, so hot and soft against his palm. "We've got to find her a nickname," he says, still chortling a little. "I don't know what—Eggie?"

"Ha ha," Donna says, dry. "Joey?"

"No," Josh says, too quickly. "Was that where you got Josephine?"

"No idea," Donna confesses. "JoJo?"

"Sounds like a circus elephant," Josh denies. "EJ?"

"I like it," Donna muses. "Plus it'd make Auntie Claudia happy," this addressed to the hungrily sucking pink bundle.

"EJ, CJ," Josh says aloud. "Better than-"

"Oh, stop," Donna admonishes. "Did you call the kids?"

"They're with Helen," Josh assures her, "Matt says they can keep them as long as we need them to."

Donna smiles peaceably at her husband reaches out to stroke his cheek. "I love you," she says, sweetly.

"Love you too," Josh responds, nearly automatically. He glances up from their daughter to give her an earnest, warm-eyed smile.

"No more kids," she informs him. "I am never giving birth again. I am never being pregnant again."

"You say that like it was my idea," Josh kids her. "I was good with just Noah and Ellie, but someone I could name wanted three. Who was that again?"

* * *

I'm baaaaack! Sort of.

I don't remember where (and if any of you do, please tell me so I can credit them) but somewhere there's a fic where Donna's full name is Donnatella Viridis and it is explained that her mother had a tendency to be assailed by temporary insanity in the moments after birth, and ended up choosing to name all of her children something ridiculous. If you've read Heirlooms, you'll know that in my headcanon she only managed to nail Vincent, aka Vicenzo Desperado, the first child of the Ricci-Moss dynasty, before her husband Nathan stepped in, leaving Donnatella Grace and Gabriella Angeline with their own, relatively normal names.  
What would happen, then, if Josh wasn't around for the birth of their third child?  
For the record I actually think Eglantine is a great girl's name but I have suspicions that my partner will not agree.

Hugs and Kisses,

Eden


End file.
